writerfangirl

30,031/50,000 - 60%


In all the years I have done NaNoWriMo--six officially, plus that seventh year unofficially--I have NEVER been ahead this far in the game. I am typically struggling. I think I have officially written more now than I did last year. I've been putting things off--even homework stuff--and making NaNo my number one priority. I don't like doing that, but it is also my one thing that I am doggedly trying to get done this year, and early. I am going to the Redondo Beach write-a-thon *fingers crossed, if I can get a ride* in LA, and want to finish there, or by there. That's this Saturday. I need to average 4,000 words a day to get there. I can get this done. I have enough characters to play with right now.

I have hit that dull point in my story, sadly. That point where all the characters are sounding alike and they are getting a bit whiny. I need to have something to actually happen. There will be some fun mixing of a pair of ex's coming up soon. One's a witch and one's a werewolf, and he wasn't a werewolf when he was dating here. I did go into flying by the seat of my pants again. I haven't hit all the plot points I have wanted to yet. I'm not even sure what the end game is. Maybe it will not identify itself before I get out of the 50k. What I plan to do is after I write this, to read it, and make notes on it and expand and work it out. Cut and expand. My rough draft has just been about me getting it down in some form. It feels really tight to me. I remember reading the short story collection this novel is tied to and thinking how nervous my writing was. This shows me that I have indeed grown as a writer. It was really nice to see that.

Let's see. Other things that are going on. I am still working on getting my items sold on eBay for my fundraising, but I found that I need a copy of a letter from the OLL that says it's okay that I do that on eBay. Doh! Either I get the letter or not. If I don't, I am still putting the items up on eBay. :)

I have watched some good television lately. I have really become a big fan of Smallville of all things. This past episode, "Abandoned," really hit all the points for me. I loved how there were three storylines going on, where there was emotional development for each character. I think the show is hitting its stride. I hope it doesn't really end this season. There isn't good genre television around right now, especially genre that can get into a little bit of whimsy.

This episode got me thinking about the kind of writing I prefer in television. I'll be doing a write-up about that on my other blog soon. Hopefully before next weekend. I want to get a post a week, at least, there.

My Tuesday will be pretty interesting: brokenbacktango and I are going to go see Matt Smith on Craig Ferguson. I'm still blown away that I was able to pull this off. I found about the show really late in the game, even after Ferguson had started to tweet about it. There's going to be a Dalek there! I've wanted to see/meet him, but didn't think I would get a real chance given that he's filming and probably wouldn't be over in CA. So this was such a treat that came up. I've never seen to Ferguson before, so I have no idea how things are done over there. But can't wait!

In the second half of the month now and there's still a lot to do. One good thing is that NaNoWriMo feels so feasible. It was feeling like that already, but the ending is in sight. I have less than 20,000 words left. THAT is hitting home for me.

Gotta get to bed now so I can get up in a few hours and get back to work.

PS roxicons has some of the greatest icons I have ever seen. Go check them out! So colorful and pretty.

16036/50000 - 32% (more than a quarter! Woohoo!)


Haven't gotten back to my eBays or my my letters, but I did write about 6000 words. According to my NaNo page, at this rate I will be finishing my NaNo by Nov. 23rd. I'd like to finish on the 21st, during the So Cal Write-a-Thon. I want a bell, demmit! :D That would be pretty sweet. I want to be at 25k by the end of the 8th. That's my goal for right now. I have a lot I need to be writing today that isn't related to NaNo. I need to get back to my Maisel classes because last week I've been very neglectful. I need to catch up. I'll be doing my write-ups tomorrow in addition to my nine thousand or so words. I may even get a few more words in before I head to bed.

I have two more write-ins this week. The Monday one will be at CK and the Tuesday one is at the LA Library. I really love the people at both. I can't wait to see the folks in LA, especially because I was having a wonderful conversation with this woman who is passionate about the homeless in LA. She herself has been homeless and she is now an advocate. Based on what she has said so far, it sounds like her life has gotten turned upside down for the good in the last month. She uses Twitter as a way of expressing herself. It is an important tool to people who did not have a voice before. I find this extraordinary. I know Twitter is an important connecting tool, but there are ways it is being used that I hadn't even thought about.

I have put a lot of my other projects on the burner. There is a project that I am collaborating on with a painter. I did a lot of the writing of the proposal and guess what! We got accepted! They don't know when we will exhibit, as they are using the open store-fronts and they will be given out to artists as they come available. I guess this is something for 2011, though, which I am grateful for that because I am going to be very busy from now until the end of 2010. After NaNo, I want to get to doing some more incredible amounts of writing.

I need to buckle down on my writing and my walking.

This is where I am for my words and steps for the year:

Words: 78,789/250,000 (this is through October; I am not including my NaNo words yet)


Steps: 690,000/1,000,000 (690k is 345 miles! Wowza! o.o This is about 40 miles shy of the driving distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco.)

Words: I am going to have to average 85,606 words in November and December to reach 250k (That's 3722 words a day in November and 2762 words a day in December. This is do-able)

Steps: I am going to have to average 155,000 steps in November and December to reach 1 million steps (this is 6,740 steps a day in November and 5,000 steps a day in December. Kind of do-able)

I am trying to ascribe to the every little bit counts method and it seems to be working.

Oops. I didn't even mention the write-in today. I got a visit by the MLs! It was us, two people who had gone to the kick off and a woman from Cal Poly. I was very excited to see that the turn out was okay because at first I thought it would just be me and the MLs. I think I am going to get to CK much earlier on Sundays so I can get a better table. We were spread out and that kind of sucked.

I also have been squandering a lot of time on Bejeweled and Words With Friends on my iPod Touch. And some fun on Fruit Ninja too. But balancing is good, especially when things get done. I am quite pleased. I would like to get that e-Bay stuff done, especially before the 10th when things are free to post.

I really, really want to get this started already. I have a bunch of characters and I want to see what they're all going to do. I should work out a little more on backgrounds, getting them a little more rounded. Tomorrow I'll make index cards for everybody.

I feel like this is my year. Finally! I also feel like the writing will actually be interesting (to me) and it won't sound like me just whining through the main char. I have ten lead voices that I am going to be drawing from, so there is a bit of diversity there. They each have their things going on. I like the underlining connection between all of them too. I need to start reading my book about that, too.

Things to do: October, 24th, 2010:

~ Finish reading Sera Beak's book The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark (this book is amazing, just fyi. Her website is pretty incredible. I recommend checking out the cast of her movie. Particularly Gabrielle Bernstein, the Urban Angel of Transformation She looks like Hayden Panettiere in some of those pics. Crazy! And I need her book too.)

~ Start reading book for major plot point in my NaNo story.

~ Creativity Coaching. I haven't mentioned it here, but I am studying to be a creativity coach. As a creativity coach-in-training, I am offering free coaching sessions (by e-mail) to anybody who wants them. If you need a sounding board, a cheerleader, a seasoned writer to give you some advice about NaNo or writing in general, I might be able to help you. Leave a message here or PM me your e-mail and we will talk. :D

~ Work out character cards. Front and back, I fill up every bit of space. :D

~ Start cleaning room. My focus in there is to figure out what stuff I am going to sell, throw away, or give away. This ties into the following two points:

~ NaNoWriMo Funraising I set up a gifttool a couple of days ago. You can find me HERE. I've put some offerings up there, including a Follow Friday Shoutout, you naming one of my characters, and a picture edit for you. Not to mention I am going to do a drawing for some of the prizes that NaNoWriMo will be giving me for fundraising. I want to share the wealth. Now how things tie to my room cleaning is that I am going to be finding fandom stuff to auction off. One thing I know for certain I will be auctioning off is a shirt that Milo Ventimiglia wore in the movie Gamer. Yeah, THAT shirt.

~ NaNo Book Drive. I have a ton of books, and most likely some I don't want/need anymore. So those I will be giving to the Los Angeles NaNo group for the book drive we are doing. My loss is someone else's gain. \o/ And my gain is a less messy room! Woot!

~ Get my blog posted. I have my very first pro blog post nearly done. Just gotta kick myself into gear and finish the editing. But it is coming over to Writing the Path.

I feel like I am forgetting something, but darn if I remember what that is. Ack! I think that's good. If I remember something, I'll tack it on later. :D

I hope everybody has a good Sunday! And Monday!

Prompt: Peter, Claude - Not invisible anymore

Title: Reconnection
Rating: PG-13 (for swearing and description of Sylar's nastiness)
Spoilers: Through "Let it Bleed" (and knowledge of relatively recent Heroes comics is a plus)
Words: 777
Disclaimer: Nobody belongs to me.

( click me )

Only been writing for two hours and I just reached 3497. I have 6503 words left for today. No steps achieved yet. I'll start walking after I reach 5000 or 6000. I want to be at least halfway done before leaving the house. We're supposed to be doing some shopping today. That will help with the steps, but not the words. Maybe I could get all the words done by my leaving. We'll see! Going to take a break now.

I've been thinking about prompts and I decided to hit the prompt community that I had made. There are some ninety prompts there. Lots of variety. Some are quotes, but most are phrases or are titles of books that I absolutely fell in love with. I gathered all of them in 2008, when I was a bookseller who was responsible for shelving books. So I got to see A LOT of books.

Please feel free to use these prompts for whatever you want to do with them. If you do use them, write to them, I'd love to see the result!

( take me to the prompts! )

I have now reached 4,026 words for today. Just 5,974 left to go and a little less than ten hours to do it. This is definitely do-able. I am going to be going out in a minute, and write things on the road.

So I am going to attempt the impossible today with no preparation and limited time: I'm going to see if I can make today a 10K Day. I have a new story I'm working on. And I have another one to rely on, too. And a third one also on the backburner. I'll get to those two soon enough. Need to flesh both out. Need to flesh out the one I'm working on right now, too. I have three characters, a location, and some backhistory already cropping up. I am learning about them as I write. It is very NaNoWriMoish, though. But 10K in one day...damn. If I can learn how to do that now and gain a quick speed at it, I'll be all set for November. I have a hope, though, to do a 10k day once a week. Every seventh day. As it happens, the next one that Milli Thornton, the organizer of the 10K day, is going to hold it on the 14th, a week from today. So maybe it will be an every Thursday thing for me. That's 52 weeks of 10ks. 52,000 words. That would be great for my 250,000 words that I need for the year, for getyourwordsout. I already have written quite a few pages this month, too. Have no idea, though. I'm not doing my first count of those pages until tomorrow. I'm curious to see how much I can write by using the three pages a day model. Sadly, I haven't opened The Artist's Way since the first. I did start a book called The Writer's Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules For Mastering Your Craft. The tips are one page, two pages at most, and are really colorful. I'm currently on rule 17: Stop reading this book. Write. So I closed my book and started writing.

One of the highlights of the National Novel Writing Month is the Night of Writing Dangerously Write-a-thon Fundraiser. This is my sixth year doing NaNo and I've never been, but I've always wanted to. This is actually the first year that I'll be able to attend because I have the funds to get myself to San Francisco!

As it is a write-a-thon fundraiser, you need to get sponsors to get you there. $200 USD will get you in. I need all the help I can on this to reach the goal. Any amount would help. One dollar. Anything. The money goes to The Office of Letters and Light, the parent non-profit company behind NaNoWriMo. Their main program is the Young Writers Program.

Thank you for any help that you can give! I'm really looking forward to this NaNo. I'm trying to be a Municipal Liaison for my area and I'm anticipating winning NaNo number 4.

Please help sponsor me to attend the Night of Writing Dangerously 2009